Thank You Bob Hollingworth!
Welcome John Wise

In June, IR-4’s North Central Region (NCR) Director, Bob Hollingworth will retire. Bob has been involved with IR-4 serving on the Project Management Committee (PMC, formerly known as the Technical Committee) since 1987. While he will step down as director, he will maintain his involvement with IR-4 through June of 2015.

Bob became Professor Emeritus in 1997 but continued several activities at MSU including acting as Director of the NCR IR-4 Project. During these years, Bob maintained the collaboration of 12 NCR states and was involved in the operation and upgrade of a modern IR-4 residue analytical laboratory at MSU.

In addition to working with IR-4, Bob has published approximately 130 reviewed articles and has edited or co-edited 8 books. For several years, he has acted as consultant on food safety issues on the Gates Foundation Grant to educate regulators for GMOs in Africa. He has taught modules on risk assessment and regulation for both chemical and biotechnological risks in foods in several international summer courses as well as at invitational meetings in a variety of countries. He has also served on a variety of state, national and international government panels and commissions dealing with pesticide and food safety issues, and has received awards from both the USDA and the American Chemical Society for his research in these areas.

IR-4 wishes to thank Bob for his many years of service to the IR-4 Project and for his leadership in steering the NCR through times of triumph and challenge, always with great distinction.

On July 1, 2014, John Wise, a professor in the MSU Department of Entomology, and Research and Extension Coordinator of the MSU Trevor Nichols Research Center in Fennville, MI, will become the NCR IR-4 Director. John received a B.S. in Natural Resources in 1984 from the University of Michigan, M.S. in Entomology in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Resource Development in 1999 from MSU. His primary research interest is studying the performance characteristics of new insecticide chemistries for control of fruit insect pests. He also investigates alternative delivery systems for crop protection materials in fruit agroecosystems. John runs the Applied Insecticide Toxicology lab on the MSU campus, conducting research on the performance mechanisms and plant penetration attributes of pesticides, pesticide environmental fate and arthropod resistance.

He has developed a wide range of Integrated Pest Management and Good Agriculture Practices training programs, targeting large commercial farms as well as small underserved grower communities. These training programs have led to opportunities to offer training venues in other US states, like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey, as well as international train-the-trainer events in Chile, Mexico, Rwanda and India.

John has been a Field Research Director (FRD) for the IR-4 GLP field residue program in the north-central region for more than fifteen years. His research and team at Fennville were the feature article in IR-4’s Focus on a Researcher Volume 38 Number 3 in July of 2007. John has also agreed to join the IR-4 Newsletter Committee representing the PMC and bringing an FRD perspective to the newsletter. Welcome John!